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V.Pronovost Screwball a Genre for the People “Screwball”: A Genre for the People Representing Social Classes in Depression Screwball Comedy (1934-1938) Virginie Pronovost Department of Media Studies Master Thesis 15 ECTS credits Cinema Studies Master's Programme in Cinema Studies (60 ECTS credits) Spring term 2020 Supervisor: Bo Florin “Screwball”: A Genre for the People Representing Social Classes in Depression Screwball Comedy (1934- 1938) Virginie Pronovost Abstract History welcomed the screwball comedy genre in 1934, a time where cinema was in urgent need of providing escapism to audiences victim of the Great Depression. Screwball films, therefore, chose to underline the distinction between social classes and to emphasise on the imperfections of the upper class. The following thesis aims to determine how Depression screwballs (screwball comedies released from 1934 to 1938) used their narrative power to establish this distinction between opposed social classes and how this reflects the undeniable importance of an overlooked genre. It is with a socio-historical approach, personal analyses and observations, that the following research has been conducted. In conclusion, it has been recognised that the genre drew its importance, not only in the way it represents social classes but also how it depicts their mutual interactions, therefore forming a significant whole. Keywords Screwball comedy, Depression screwball, social classes, Great Depression, cross-class relationships, escapism, 1930s American Cinema Acknowledgements It is with my deepest gratitude that I wish to thank the following people who made the writing of this thesis possible: My supervisor Bo Florin for his guidance and feedback during the various steps of the thesis development My grandparents whose immense generosity allowed me to pursue university studies My parents, sister, family and friends who have always been encouraging and supportive regarding my interest in classic films My teachers at Stockholm University who often encouraged me to think outside of the box Contents Introduction .................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: Screwball Comedy in the Years of the Depression ........ 5 Chapter 2: Screwball Characters .................................................. 13 1. Screwball Heiress ............................................................... 13 2. Screwball Working Man/Screwball Tramp ............................... 19 3. Screwball Working Girl ........................................................ 22 4. Screwball Businessman ....................................................... 28 Chapter 3: Screwball Settings ...................................................... 31 1. New York City in Screwball Comedies .................................... 31 2. Nightclubs in Screwball Comedies ......................................... 35 3. Screwball Interiors ............................................................. 38 Chapter 4: Adaptation and Moving Places in It Happened One Night, Easy Living and Merrily We Live ........................................ 42 1. Adaptation ........................................................................ 43 2. Moving Places .................................................................... 47 Conclusion ................................................................................... 51 Filmography ................................................................................. 54 Bibliography ................................................................................ 56 PRONOVOST 1 Introduction When banker Edward Seton Sr. (Henry Kolker) organises a high-class party to announce the engagements of his daughter Julia (Doris Nolan) in Holiday (George Cukor, 1938), his son, Ned (Lew Ayres), describes the event as a “first-class funeral”.1 Although Ned, like the rest of his family, comes from a wealthy background, the words he chooses to qualify this social gathering are a direct reflection of what classic screwball comedies aimed to express and denounce regarding the on-screen depiction of social classes. William K. Everson in Hollywood Bedlam: Classic Screwball Comedies explains that the genre, which entered cinema History in the early 1930s and continued through the end of the Second World War, was a subgenre of romantic comedy mixing farce, slapstick, comedy of manners and satire. 2 The chosen name, screwball, comes from baseball vocabulary describing and “unpredictable pitch by a baseball pitcher” as explained by Christopher McKittrick in his detailed description of the genre.3 The action in screwball films is indeed spontaneous and dynamic like the trajectory of a ball in a baseball game and chaotic like a team’s victory. Films from the genre used chaos and dynamism to illustrate several social questions and problems, the main ones being marriage and divorce, social classes, and genders depiction. In connection to these themes, the screwball comedy received different names over the years such as the sex comedy without sex, the comedy of remarriage or the Depression comedy. It is the last designation that will take its importance in the following research. After all, screwball comedy, a genre that was mostly all-American, saw the day during the Great Depression. Consequently, it was the answer to the distinction between those who had been affected by the crisis and high society people who had the privilege to continue living a comfortable and prolific life. Filmmakers made screwball comedy films for the little people. They were a critic and satire of the unreachable upper class. Author Stephen Sharot, in Wealth and/or Love: Class and Gender in the Cross-class Romance Films of the Great Depression, supports this contextualisation by describing screwball comedy as a mixture between social and cultural changes and the “permutation of class and gender”, which resulted into “cross-class 1 00:44:25 2 William K. Everson, Hollywood Bedlam: Classic Screwball Comedies (Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publ., 1994), 13. 3 Christopher McKittrick, “What Is a Screwball Comedy?” LiveAbout, accessed May 22, 2020, https://www.liveabout.com/screwball-comedy-definition-4157505. PRONOVOST 2 romance films”.4 The 1930s was a decade of significant changes for the American population, not long after the end of the First World War and at the dawn of the second. Screwball comedies helped ordinary people to struggle during these difficult times, and filmmakers made the best use of the 7th art to illustrate social problems and social distinctions. The genre followed the pre-code era of the late 20s-early 30s, gangster films and Busby Berkeley musicals and began to lose its impact at the break of the war.5 Films like Platinum Blonde (Frank Capra, 1931), one of the many collaborations between Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin, or Bombshell (Victor Fleming, 1933) are considered pre-screwball comedies. However, many agree to label Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934) as being the first screwball comedy. It truly set the tone of the genre. It is the story of the almost impossible cross-class encounter between a spoiled heiress, Ellen “Ellie” Andrews (Claudette Colbert), and newspaper reporter without a job, Peter Warne (Clark Gable). It is a film where high society is taken out of its comfort zone and has to rely upon an inferior one to survive. On its release, the film was a box-office success and did well at the Oscars.6 It appealed to the audience with characters reflecting their reality: men losing their jobs and women going to work.7 Was the success of the film due to its realism, the presence of superstar Clark Gable, the King of Hollywood, or its cinematographic quality? It was most likely a mixture of all that. One thing is sure, a generation of movie directors then used the film medium to express and illustrate social classes in a way that resonated with the audience. Watching those films became the perfect way for those hit by the economic crisis to escape from their worries and become conscious of rich people’s problems. Frank Capra was one of the essential figures of screwball comedy, but one can also list Howard Hawks, Mitchell Leisen, George Cukor, Preston Sturges and more. Although It Happened One Night’s success proved that this type of films worked, not all screwball comedies were financial successes. Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938), released at a time where Katharine Hepburn was labelled box-office poison, was a commercial flop. However, cinephiles today consider it a classic and one of the best depictions of the screwball 4 Stephen Sharot, “Wealth and/or Love: Class and Gender in the Cross-class Romance Films of the Great Depression,” Journal of American Studies 47, no. 1 (2013): 89, accessed May 23, 2020, doi: 10.2307/23352508. 5 Joy Gould Boyum, “Columbia’s Screwball Comedies: Wine, Women, and Wisecracks”, in Columbia Pictures: Portrait of a Studio, ed. Bernard F. Dick (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 89, accessed May 23, 2020, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt130hrz7.8. 6 Ed Sikov, Screwball: Hollywood’s Madcap Romantic Comedies (New York: Crown Publishers, 1989), 89. 7 Elizabeth Kendall, The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1930s (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002), 60, accessed May 22, 2020, https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Elizabeth_Kendall_The_Runaway_Bride?id=E5mPoIBAXKEC. PRONOVOST 3 genre. By considering its 1938 release, audiences were perhaps more preoccupied with the imminent arrival of the war and possibly did not need this
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